Newtown Families Grieve As Medical Examiner Works To Identify Victims In Sandy Hook School Shooting

The victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings each had between three and 11 wounds, Chief State Medical Examiner H. Wayne Carver III said Saturday afternoon.

"This is a very devastating set of injuries," Carver said at a press conference. "I've been at this a third of a century. This probably is the worst I have seen, or the worst I know of any of my colleagues having seen."

Carver said all four of the doctors and 10 technicians in his office worked on the autopsies of the 26 dead on Saturday, and they expect to be finished by Sunday morning.

Newtown First Selectwoman Patricia Llodra asked that her community, mourning the deaths of 20 children and six adults in the worst shooting at a primary school in U.S. history, be treated with "kindness and respect."

"Our wound is deep because we are a close-knit community," she said at the same press conference. "We truly care for each other … We will put our arms around those families and around each other. We will find a way to heal so that all of our residents, young and old, will again find peace."

Llodra thanked many in the state and the nation for their outreach, and said, "Please know that we have suffered a terrible loss and we need your respect."

On Friday, a gunman forced his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School by blasting as many as a half-dozen shots through the front door, police said. The shooter also killed himself inside the school, authorities said, and his mother was later found dead at her home 2 miles away.

Saturday night Robbie Parker remembered his 6-year-old daughter, Emilie Parker, as a "bright," "creative" girl who acted as a mentor to her 3- and 4-year-old sisters.

"Emily's laughter was infectious and all those who met her would agree this world is a better place because she has been in it," Parker, 30, told reporters Saturday in Newtown. "She was beautiful, she was blond, always smiling. She was the type of person that could just light up a room. She always had something kind to say about anybody, and her love and the strength she gave us and the example she showed us is remarkable.

"She is an incredible person and I'm so blessed to be her dad."

Parker said he has found strength through his faith and family, and is comforted to know he's not alone.

The parents of the other victims are "in the same boat as we are," he said. "The emotions might be different … but we're all in this together and we're forever linked by this event."

One of those killed, first-grade teacher Victoria Soto, died after hiding her students, a source told The Courant.

Soto was a teacher in room 10, the classroom next to where the shooting began, the source said. She hid her students — 15 or 16 of them, some possibly in a bathroom — before the gunman entered the room.

He wanted to shoot more people, the source said, but, seeing no one but Soto, he shot her, then left the room, the source sad.

Principal Dawn Hochsprung, 47, was also killed.

"She died protecting the children that she adored so much. It's just incredibly shocking,'' said Gerald Stomski, first selectman in Woodbury, where Hochsprung lived. Hochsprung had been the principal in the Bethlehem and Woodbury school district before taking the job in Newtown two years ago.

The shootings took place in two first-grade classrooms around 9:30 a.m., sources said, and one witness said she believed as many as 100 rounds had been fired. All of the adults and 18 of the children were pronounced dead at the school. Two more students died at a hospital. One victim was injured but not killed.

State police sources identified the shooter as Adam Lanza, 20, who was a graduate of Newtown High School. Lanza was dressed in black fatigues and brought two weapons into the school, police sources said: a Glock and a Sig Sauer, both pistols. A .223-caliber rifle was found in his car in the school parking lot, sources said.

A motive for the shooting remained unclear.

Carver said his staff took photographs of the victims to show the families.

"We did not bring the bodies and the families into contact," he said. "We took pictures of them, of their facial features. It's easier on the families when you do that. We felt it would be better to do it this way. You can control the situation depending on your photographer, and I have very good photographers."

A number of media outlets, including CNN and NBC News, citied sources in reporting that Lanza had been involved in some sort of altercation at the school the day before the shooting. That could not be confirmed by local authorities.

State Police Lt. J. Paul Vance said that the victims have been positively identified and that their families have been notified. He said their names will be released once the medical examiner's office completes its work. At the press conference Saturday afternoon, Vance said there were no reports of any altercations at the school involving Lanza. He added that police had not "officially" identified him as the shooter "at this time" as a matter of policy.

A school psychologist also is believed to be among the victims. Sandy Hook has more than 600 students from kindergarten through fourth grade.

Vance said detectives are still working in the school and could spend another day or longer examining every "crack and crevice of that facility."

The horror of the shooting reverberated far beyond the school. Impromptu vigils were held across the state. In Washington, D.C., House Speaker John Boehner ordered flags at the Capitol to be flown at half-staff. And at the White House, a visibly emotional President Barack Obama offered the nation's condolences. "Our hearts are broken today," he said.

"This evening, Michelle and I will ... hug our children a little tighter and tell them that we love them," Obama said. "But there are families in Connecticut who cannot do that tonight."

On Saturday afternoon, state and federal officials were preparing for the expected arrival of President Obama on Sunday. Meanwhile, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy was scheduled to make a 5 p.m. address from his office Saturday.

'Kind Of Strange'

Adam Lanza was a 2010 graduate of Newtown High. Andrew Lapple, who sat next to Lanza in homeroom, described him as a skinny, reserved kid "who never really talked at all."

Lapple said he played Little League baseball with Lanza and remembers he wasn't very good. Instead, Lanza was more of a "tech-geek," he said.

"He was always carrying around his laptop holding onto it real tight,'' Lapple said. "He walked down the halls against the wall almost like he was afraid of people. He was definitely kind of strange, but you'd never think he'd do something like this."

One former classmate of Adam Lanza remembered him as quiet.

Kateleen Soy, now an undergraduate at Hofstra University in New York, said she was in Lanza's seventh-grade class at St. Rose of Lima School in Newtown.

She recalled that he joined the class after the school year began and left before school got out for the summer.

After he left St. Rose, she didn't recall seeing him again until she spotted him in a hall while they were students at Newtown High School.

"I wanted people to know he wasn't always a monster," Soy said. "He became one, but he wasn't always that way."

Police have given no indication of what Lanza's motive may have been and it is not clear what his connection was to the elementary school.

There have been reports that Nancy Lanza worked at the school. But ABC News and "The Today Show" reported that Janet Robinson, superintendent of schools in Newtown, said there is no record that Adam Lanza or his mother Lanza ever worked there.

Marsha Moskowitz, a former bus driver in town, remembered Lanza and her older brother.

"You know the trouble kids, and you figure, 'Pfft, that one's going to be trouble.' But I never would have thought that about them," she said.

Moskowitz ran into the boys' mother a couple of weeks ago and exchanged pleasantries, she said.

Adam Lanza's grandmother, Dorothy Hanson, 78, told The Associated Press she was too distraught to speak when reached by phone at her home in Brooksville, Fla.

"I just don't know, and I can't make a comment right now," Hanson said in a shaky voice as she started to cry. She declined to comment further and hung up.

Friends and neighbors said Nancy Lanza, 52, was a kind woman with a sense of humor. Slender, with short hair, Lanza was a fixture at neighborhood events such as the Labor Day parade, and had a special interest in Christmas lights.

Lanza lived on Yogananda Street, in a hilly, affluent neighborhood in the east end of town. Neighbors call it a children- and family-friendly place, a description backed up by the kids riding their bikes and the folks walking their dogs despite the crush of television trucks and reporters waiting near the Lanza home.

Lanza's friend and neighbor Rhonda Cullens fought back tears Friday afternoon in the doorway of her home on Founders Lane, just around the corner from the Lanza residence.

She said she met Nancy Lanza playing bunco, a popular dice game, with a group of women in the neighborhood, but she hadn't seen her for years since she stopped playing with the group. "She was just a sweet, caring person," Cullens said.

In Stamford, police stood guard Saturday afternoon outside the Bartina Lane home of Peter Lanza, Adam Lanza's father. Residents from the affluent north Stamford neighborhood slowed while driving past a line of press cars and SUVs lining the street.

Next-door neighbor Tony Battinelli said Peter Lanza lived in the modest, older one-story gray house with his second wife, Shelly, a librarian, for a year or two.

"I wouldn't consider them friendly neighbors. They were quiet, they didn't look up when we rode by," Battinelli said. "She never says much."

Battinelli said he didn't know Adam Lanza, but has sympathy for his father.

"As a parent, I feel for him. I can't imagine what he's going through right now."

'People Were Crying'

As news of the massacre spread through typically quiet Newtown on Friday, panicked parents clogged roads as they streamed to the school in search of their young sons and daughters. Police evacuated the children to a nearby firehouse, and tearful parents were led into the same building. Most came out relieved, clutching and caressing their children. A few came out empty-handed and grief-stricken.

Vanessa Bajraliu, a 9-year-old fourth grader, said she heard the shots.

"I saw policemen — lots of policemen in the hallway with guns," she said. "The police took us out of the school. We were told to hold each others' hands and to close our eyes. We opened our eyes when we were outside."

Her brother, Mergim Bajraliu, 17, a senior at Newtown High School, was at his nearby home when he heard shots, he said. He went to a neighbor's house.

"Then we heard sirens," he said.

He rushed to the school on foot and saw a girl being carried out, he said. She looked badly injured. Another girl had blood on her face, he said.

Bajraliu soon found his sister and took her away from the scene.

Parent Richard Wilford said his Sandy Hook second-grader, Richie, heard what he described as "pans falling" when gunshots rang out. He said that his son told him that his teacher went to check on the noise, then returned to the classroom, locked the door and told the students to stand in the corner.

"What does a parent think about coming to a school where there's a shooting?" Wilford said. "It's the most terrifying moment of a parent's life. … You have no idea."

Alexis Wasik, 8, a third-grader at the school, said police checked everybody inside the school before they were escorted to the firehouse.

"We had to walk with a partner," she said.

One child leaving the school said there was shattered glass everywhere. A police officer ran into the classroom and told them to run outside and keep going until they reached the firehouse.

Audra Barth, who was walking away from the school with her first-grade son and third-grade daughter, said a teacher took first-graders into the restroom after bullets came through the window.

Brendan Murray, a 9-year-old fourth-grader, said he was in the gym with his class when he heard "lots of banging." He said the teachers put the students in a nearby closet where they stayed for about 15 minutes before police officers told them to leave the building.

The boy said the students ran down a hallway where there were police at every door. "Lots of people were crying," he said.

But as reporters converged on the school, the children generally seemed more composed than their parents.

Horrific Scene

The first police on the scene instantly recognized the gravity of the crime and "asked for every resource we could get," Newtown Police Lt. George Sinko said. On- and off-duty state troopers raced to Newtown, including tactical units, K9 units and the bomb squad. The state police helicopter was put in the air, and before long agents with the FBI and ATF were headed to Newtown as well.

No officer fired a weapon at the school, police said.

Vance said the first goal was evacuating the school and bringing the children to a staging area to reunite them with their families. Students described being ushered from their classrooms hand-in-hand, with their eyes closed. Room-by-room, police extracted the students, scurrying them through hallways and outside toward the firehouse.

As the school was cleared, heavily armed police swept the building at least four times looking for victims, evidence and the possibility of additional shooters. Lanza is believed to have acted alone, and the killings were limited to two rooms in one section of the school.

With a tentative identification, police also descended on the nearby home of Nancy J. Lanza. Inside, sources said, they found her body. Police in New Jersey also went to the home of Ryan Lanza — Adam's brother and the man authorities originally thought was the shooter. Ryan Lanza was questioned, but there are no indications he is suspected in the case.

All Newtown schools — and schools in several surrounding towns— were locked down Friday morning. Many local businesses closed. Outside one store was a handwritten sign: "Say A Prayer."

"This is most definitely the worst thing experienced here in town," Sinko said. "But for now, we're concerned about the families of the victims."

But there are concerns for the police as well. Vance said state police are providing crisis counseling for the first responders at the school — those who rushed into the classrooms to an incomprehensible sight.

"This was a very tragic, horrific scene that they encountered," he said.

'Evil Visited … Today'

Friends and relatives of school personnel spent anxious hours waiting to hear the fate of their loved ones.

When Janet Vollmer, a Sandy Hook kindergarten teacher, returned to her Liberty Street home about 4 p.m. Friday, her grown son and a nearby neighbor were there to greet her. The neighbor ran over and hugged Vollmer.

"I kept hearing it might have been a kindergarten teacher," the neighbor said. "I was hoping it wasn't her. I was shaking at work."

Students at nearby Newtown High School on Berkshire Road were stunned when they learned of the shootings.

Senior Alex Buttery went to Sandy Hook Elementary. "I know the teachers. I'm just wondering who it is," she said.

Newtown United Methodist Church opened its doors about noon after ministers heard of the tragedy. Brad Tefft, a bereavement minister at the church, said Newtown is a close-knit community.

"The closeness became more apparent when you see a tragedy like this," he said. "We all feel for the families, and the kids and the teachers. It's part of who we are. It's part of the fabric of what this community is like. When something like this happens it tears at all our heartstrings."

There were about two dozen people in the room at the firehouse when Malloy spoke to them, and some still didn't know the fate of their children. Occhiogrosso said it was a scene of excruciating pain and grief.

"What can you say at a moment like that? He was trying make sure they got confirmation that their children were dead. Most of the people already knew what had happened. Some were holding out hope. Others thought their children had been transported to the hospital."

The toll of Friday's shooting brought memories and comparisons to other tragedies, including the shootings in Columbine and Aurora in Colorado, the Petit family killings in Cheshire, and the 9/11 attacks.

Friday's massacre may be the largest school shooting of young children in the world, said Larry Barton, a professor at The American College in Pennsylvania whose three decades of research includes studying violence in workplaces, public spaces and schools.

Mass school shootings have often targeted high school or college students, he said.

"This is among the most diabolical crimes, to kill kindergarten-age children," Barton said. "It's very rare."